Harty: Medical hardship appeal process needs some serious fixing
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Drew Ott deserved better.
That doesn’t necessarily mean he deserved a fifth season of eligibility because you could argue rules are rules in his case.
Ott played in over 30 percent of Iowa’s games last season – he appeared in six of 14 games – and that is beyond the 30 percent threshold the NCAA uses to determine medical hardship cases.
The standout defensive end had hoped the NCAA would make an exception with his case because Ott actually played in less than 30 percent of Iowa’s defensive snaps last season. Ott appeared in six games overall with four starts.
However, the season opener against Illinois State was the only game in which Ott played from start to finish.
Ott injured his elbow against Iowa State in the second game and that limited his play over the next three games. He then suffered a season-ending knee injury against Illinois in the sixth game, and that was it.
Ott’s college career was over. We just didn’t know for sure until the news broke on Wednesday.
I personally think the NCAA should have made an exception with Ott because he is being penalized for having the courage and desire to play with pain. He could’ve taken more time to let his elbow heal, but he felt an obligation to his team.
So Ott withstood the pain and the risk of doing more damage to his elbow and started three of four games after being injured.
Ott still would be a Hawkeye if he wasn’t such a tough guy. If he had just taken more time to let his elbow heal, it’s unlikely that Ott would have surpassed the 30 percent threshold last season.
The NCAA needs more flexibility with the rule because appearing in several plays shouldn’t be equal to playing an entire game.
But more than anything, the NCAA needs to accelerate the process because it’s inexcusable that Ott had to wait five months for a final decision.
“First and foremost, I’m really disappointed for Drew,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said to reporters on Wednesday with Ott standing at his side. “Drew has just done such a great job, and it’s a tough situation.
“Beyond that, I am disappointed with the decision and also disappointed at the process, and that being said, I’ll just move on.”
Ott also plans to just move on, hopefully to the NFL. He already has signed with an agent and is starting to make contacts.
Ott showed no signs of anger or bitterness while addressing the media on Wednesday. He seemed more befuddled by the process than anything else.
And he isn’t alone.
The most confusing and maddening thing about the process is the Big Ten Conference appears to have done little to nothing for three months before finally granting Iowa’s request to forward the petition to the NCAA in late February.
“It’s really confusing,” said Ott, who field his first appeal in November. “There’s just a lot of steps that they have to go through and things like that. So, hopefully, they can get that a little more streamlined for the next person.”
Don’t count on it, unless maybe the almighty Southeastern Conference starts to complain about the medical hardship process taking too long. That might be enough to sway the NCAA.
In fairness to the NCAA, it already had denied Ott’s appeal once. Ott kept the process ongoing by exhausting all of his options.
By the time he was through, Ott’s appeal had been denied three times, first by the Big Ten, second by the NCAA staff and third by the Division I Committee on Student-Athlete reinstatement.
But even with three denials by three different committees, it shouldn’t have taken five months to make a final decision.
The NCAA was so quick to shutdown satellite camps, showing it can act swiftly when motivated to do so.
It’s bad enough that the NCAA refused to make an exception for a star player who wanted to stay in school at a time when a lot of star players can’t wait to get out of school.
But to allow the decision to take this long is the NCAA’s biggest disservice to Ott.